Chapter 10

Fabio, pensar que el Padre soberanoEn esas rayas de la palma diestra(Que son arrugas de la piel) te muestraLos accidentes del discurso humano;Es beber con el vulgo el error vanoDe la ignorancia, su comun maestra.Bien te confieso, que la suerte nuestra,Mala, o buena, la puso en nuestra mano.Di, quién te estorvará el ser Rey, si vivesSin envidiar la suerte de los Reyes,Tan contento y pacifico en la tuya,Que estén ociosas para ti sus leyes;Y qualquier novedad que el Cielo influya,Como cosa ordinaria la recibes?Fabius, to think that God hath interlinedThe human hand like some prophetic page,And in the wrinkles of the palm definedAs in a map, our mortal pilgrimage,This is to follow, with the multitudeError and Ignorance, their common guides,Yet Heaven hath placed, for evil or for good,Our fate in our own hands, whate'er betidesBeing as we make it. Art thou not a kingThyself my friend, when envying not the lotOf thrones, ambition hath for thee no sting,Laws are to thee as they existed not,And in thy harmless station no eventCan shake the calm of its assured content.

“Nature” says a Cheirologist, “was a careful workman in the creation of the human body. She hath set in the hand of man certain signs and tokens of the heart, brain and liver, because in them it is that the life of man chiefly consists, but she hath not done so of the eyes, ears, mouth, hands and feet, because those parts of the body seem rather to be made for a comeliness or beauty, than for any necessity.” What he meant to say was that any accident which threatened the three vital parts was betokened in the lines of the palm, but that the same fashioning was not necessary in relation to parts which might be injured without inducing the loss of life. Therefore every man's palm has in it the lines relating to the three noble parts, the more minute lines are only found on subjects of finer texture, and if they originally existed in husbandmen and others whose hands are rendered callous by their employments, they are effaced.

It was only cheirologically speaking that he disparaged what sailors in their emphatic language so truly call our precious eyes and limbs, not that he estimated them like Tippoo Sultan, who in one of his letters says, that if people persisted in visiting a certain person who was under his displeasure, “their ears and noses should be dispensed with.” This strange tyrant wrote odes in praise of himself, and describes the effect of his just government to be such, that in the security of his protection “the deer of the forest made their pillow of the lion and the tyger, and their mattress of the leopard and the panther.”

Tippoo did not consider ears and noses to be superfluities when in that wanton wickedness which seldom fails to accompany the possession of irresponsible power he spoke of dispensing with them. But in one instance arms and legs were regarded as worse than superfluous. Some years ago a man was exhibited who was born without either, and in that condition had found a woman base enough to marry him. Having got some money together, she one day set this wretched creature upon a chimney-piece, from whence he could not move, and went off with another man, stripping him of every thing that she could carry away. The first words he uttered, when some one came into the room and took him down, were an imprecation upon those people who had legs and arms, because, he said they were always in mischief!

The Mahommedans believe that every man's fate is written on his forehead, but that it can be read by those only whose eyes have been opened. The Brahmins say that the sutures of the skull describe in like manner the owner's destined fortune, but neither can this mysterious writing be seen by any one during his life, nor decyphered after his death. Both these notions are mere fancies which afford a foundation for nothing worse than fable. Something more extraordinary has been excogitated by W. Y. Playtes, Lecturer upon the Signs of the light of the Understanding. He announces to mankind that the prints of the nails of the Cross which our Lord shewed Thomas, are printed in the roots of the nails of the hands and feet of every man that is born into the world, for witnesses, and for leading us to believe in the truth of all the signs, and graven images and pictures that are seen in the Heavenly Looking Glass of Reflection, in the Sun and the Moon and the Stars. This Theosophist has published a short Prospectus of his intended work entitled the Horn Book for the remembrance of the Signs of Salvation, which Horn Book is (should subscriptions be forthcoming) to be published in one hundred and forty-four numbers, forming twelve octavo volumes of six hundred pages each, with fifty plates, maps and tables, and 365,000 marginal references,—being one thousand for every day in the year. Wonder not reader at the extent of this projected work; for, says the author, “the Cow of the Church of Truth giveth abundance of milk, for the Babes of Knowledge.” But for palmistry there was a plausible theory which made it applicable to the purposes of fraud.

Among the odd persons with whom Peter Hopkins had become acquainted in the course of his earlier pursuits, was a sincere student of the occult sciences, who, being a more refined and curious artist, whenever he cast the nativity of any one, took an impression from the palm of the hand, as from an engraved plate, or block. He had thus a fac-simile of what he wanted. According to Sir Thomas Browne, the variety in the lines is so great, that there is almost no strict conformity. Bewick in one of his works has in this manner printed his own thumb. There are French deeds of the 15th century which are signed by the imprint of five fingers dipt in ink, underwrittenCe est la griffe de monseigneur.1

1The Reader, who is curious in such matters, may turn to Ames and Herbert, (Dibdin, ii. 380.) for the hands in Holt's Lac Puerorum, emprynted at London by Wynkyn de Worde.

Hopkins himself did not retain any lurking inclination to believe in this art. You could know without it, he said, whether a person were open-handed, or close-fisted, and this was a more useful knowledge than palmistry could give us. But the Doctor sometimes made use of it to amuse children, and gave them at the same time playful admonition, and wholesome encouragement.

CONCERNING THE GREAT HONOURS TO WHICH CERTAIN HORSES HAVE ATTAINED, AND THE ROYAL MERITS OF NOBS.

Siento para contarlas que me llamaEl á mi, yo á mi pluma, ella á la fama.BALBUENA.

There have been great and good horses whose merits have been recorded in history and in immortal song as they well deserved to be. Who has not heard of Bucephalus? of whom Pulteney said that he questioned whether Alexander himself had pushed his conquests half so far, if Bucephalus had not stooped to take him on his back. Statius hath sung of Arion who when he carried Neptune left the winds panting behind him, and who was the best horse that ever has been heard of for taking the water,

Sæpe per Ionium Libycumque natantibus ireInterjunctus equis, omnesque assuetus in orasCæruleum deferre patrem.

Tramp, tramp across the land he went,Splash, splash across the sea.

But he was a dangerous horse in a gig. Hercules found it difficult to hold him in, and Polynices when he attempted to drive him made almost as bad a figure as the Taylor upon his ever memorable excursion to Brentford.

The virtues of Caligula's horse, whom that Emperor invited to sup with him, whom he made a Priest, and whom he intended to make Consul, have not been described by those historians who have transmitted to us the account of his extraordinary fortune; and when we consider of what materials, even in our days, both Priests and Senators are sometimes made, we may be allowed to demur at any proposition which might include an admission that dignity is to be considered an unequivocal mark of desert. More certain it is that Borysthenes was a good horse, for the Emperor Adrian erected a monument to his memory, and it was recorded in his epitaph that he used to fly over the plains and marshes and Etrurian hills, hunting Pannonian boars; he appears by his name to have been like Nobs, of Tartaric race.

Bavieca was a holy and happy horse,—I borrow the epithets from the Bishop of Chalons's sermon upon the Bells. Gil Diaz deserved to be buried in the same grave with him. And there is an anonymous Horse, of whom honorable mention is made in the Roman Catholic Breviary, for his religious merits, because after a Pope had once ridden him, he never would suffer himself to be unhallowed by carrying a woman on his back. These latter are both Roman Catholic Houyhnhnms, but among the Mahometans also, quadrupedism is not considered an obstacle to a certain kind of canonization. Seven of the Emperor of Morocco's horses have been Saints, or Marabouts as the Moors would call it; and some there were who enjoyed that honour in the year 1721 when Windus was at Mequinez. One had been thus distinguished for saving the Emperor's life: “and if a man,” says the Traveller, “should kill one of his children, and lay hold of this horse, he is safe. This horse has saved the lives of some of the captives, and is fed withcuscuruand camel's milk. After the Emperor has drank, and the horse after him, some of his favourites are suffered to drink out of the same bowl.” This was probably the horse who had a Christian slave appointed to hold up his tail when he was led abroad, and to carry a vessel and towel—“for use unmeet to tell.”

I have discovered only one Houyhnhnm who was a martyr, excepting those who are sometimes burnt with the rest of the family by Captain Rock's people in Ireland. This was poor Morocco, the learned horse of Queen Elizabeth's days: he and his master Banks, having been in some danger of being put to death at Orleans, were both burnt alive by the Inquisition at Rome, as magicians.—The word martyr is here used in its religious acceptation: for the victims of avarice and barbarity who are destroyed by hard driving and cruel usage are numerous enough to make a frightful account among the sins of this nation.

Fabretti the antiquary had a horse who when he carried his master on an antiquarian excursion, assisted him in his researches; for this sagacious horse had been so much accustomed to stop where there were ruins, and probably had found so much satisfaction in grazing, or cropping the boughs among them at his pleasure, that he was become a sort of antiquary himself; and sometimes by stopping and as it were pointing like a setter, gave his master notice of some curious and half-hidden objects which he might otherwise have past by unperceived.

How often has a drunken rider been carried to his own door by a sure-footed beast, sensible enough to understand that his master was in no condition either to guide him, or to take care of himself. How often has a stage coach been brought safely to its inn after the coachman had fallen from the box. Nay was there not a mare at Ennis races in Ireland (Atalanta was her name) who having thrown her rider, kept the course with a perfect understanding of what was expected from her, looked back and quickened her speed as the other horses approached her, won the race, trotted a few paces beyond the post, then wheeled round, and came up to the scale as usual? And did not Hurleyburley do the same thing at the Goodwood races?

That Nobs was the best horse in the world I will not affirm. Best is indeed a bold word to whatever it be applied, and yet in the shopkeeper's vocabulary it is at the bottom of his scale of superlatives. A haberdasher in a certain great city is still remembered, whose lowest priced gloves were what he called Best, but then he had five degrees of optimism; Best, Better than Best, Best of all, Better than Best of all, and the Real Best. It may be said of Nobs then that he was one of the Real Best: equal to any that Spain could have produced to compare with him, though concerning Spanish horses, the antiquary and historian Morales, (properly and as it were prophetically baptized Ambrosio, because his name ought ever to be in ambrosial odour among his countrymen) concerning Spanish horses, I say, that judicious author has said,la estima que agora se hace en todo el mundo de un caballo Español es la mas solemne cosa que puede haber en animales.

Neither will I assert that there could not have been a better horse than Nobs, because I remember how Roger Williams tells us, “one of the chiefest Doctors of England was wont to say concerning strawberries, that God could have made a better berry, but he never did.” Calling this to mind, I venture to say as that chiefest Doctor might, and we may believe would have said upon the present occasion, that a better horse than Nobs there might have been,—but there never was.

The Duchess of Newcastle tells us that her Lord, than whom no man could be a more competent judge, preferred barbs and Spanish to all others, for barbs, he said, were like gentlemen in their kind, and Spanish horses like Princes. This saying would have pleased the Doctor, as coinciding entirely with his own opinions. He was no believer in equality either among men or beasts; and he used to say, that in a state of nature Nobs would have been the king of his kind.

And why not? if I do not show you sufficient precedents for it call me FIMBULFAMBI.

A CHAPTER OF KINGS.

FIMBUL-FAMBIheitrSá er fatt kann segia,That er ósnotvrs athal.Fimbul-fambi (fatuus) vocaturQui pauca novit narrare:Ea est hominis insciti proprietas.EDDA,Háva Mál.

There are other monarchies in the inferior world, besides that of the Bees, though they have not been registered by Naturalists, nor studied by them.

For example, the King of the Fleas keeps his court at Tiberias, as Dr. Clarke discovered to his cost, and as Mr. Cripps will testify for him.

The King of the Crocodiles resides in Upper Egypt; he has no tail, but Dr. Southey has made one for him.

The Queen Muscle may be found at the Falkland Islands.

The Oysters also have their King, according to Pliny. Theirs seems to be a sort of patriarchical monarchy, the King, or peradventure the Queen, Oyster being distinguished by its size and age, perhaps therefore the parent of the bed; for every bed, if Pliny err not, has its sovereign. In Pliny's time the diver made it his first business to catch the royal Oyster, because his or her Majesty being of great age and experience, was also possessed of marvellous sagacity, which was exercised for the safety of the commonweal; but if this were taken the others might be caught without difficulty, just as a swarm of Bees may be secured after the Queen is made prisoner. Seeing, however, that his Oyster Majesty is not to be heard of now at any of the Oyster shops in London, nor known at Colchester or Milton, it may be that liberal opinions have, in the march of intellect, extended to the race of Oysters, that monarchy has been abolished among them, and that republicanism prevails at this day throughout all Oysterdom, or at least in those parts of it which be near the British shores. It has been observed also by a judicious author that no such King of the Oysters has been found in the West Indian Pearl fisheries.

The King of the Bears rules over a territory which is on the way to the desert of Hawaida, and Hatim Tai married his daughter, though the said Hatim was long unwilling to become a Mac Mahon by marriage.

“I was told by the Sheikh Othman and his son, two pious and credible persons,” says the traveller Ibn Batista, “that the monkies have a leader whom they follow as if he were their King, (this was in Ceylon). About his head is tied a turban composed of the leaves of trees, (for a crown;) and he reclines upon a staff, (which is his sceptre). At his right and left hand are four Monkies with rods in their hands, (gold sticks), all of which stand at his head whenever the leading Monkey, (his Majesty) sits. His wives and children are daily brought in on these occasions, and sit down before him; then comes a number of Monkies (his privy council) which sit and form an assembly about him. After this each of them comes with a nut, a lemon or some of the mountain fruit, which he throws down before the leader. He then eats (dining in public, like the King of France) together with his wives, and children, and the four principal Monkies: they then all disperse. One of the Jogres also told me, that he once saw the four Monkies standing in the presence of the leader, and beating another Monkey with rods; after which they plucked off all his hair.”

The Lion is the King of Beasts. Hutchinson, however, opines that Bulls may be ranked in a higher class; for helmets are fortified with their horns, which is a symbol of pre-eminence. Certainly he says, both the Bull and Lion discover the King, but the Bull is a better and more significant representative of a King than the Lion. But neither Bull nor Lion is King of all Beasts, for a certain person whose name being anagrammatized rendereth Johnny the Bear, is notoriously the King of the Bears at this time: even Ursa Major would not dispute his title. And a certain honourable member of the House of Commons would by the tottle of that whole House be voted King of the Bores.

The King of the Codfish frequents the shores of Finmark. He has a sort of chubbed head, rising in the shape of a crown, his forehead is broad, and the lower jaw bone projects a little, in other parts he resembles his subjects, whom he leads and directs in their migrations. The Laplanders believe that the fisherman who takes him, will from that time forth be fortunate, especially in fishing; and they shew their respect for his Cod-Majesty when he is taken, by hanging him up whole to dry, instead of cutting off his head as they do to the common fish.

In Japan the Tai, which the Dutch call Steenbrassem, is the King of Fish, because it is sacred to their sea-god Jebis, and because of its splendid colours, and also, perhaps, because of its exorbitant price, it being so scarce, that for a court entertainment, or on other extraordinary occasions, one is not to be had under a thousand cobangs.

Among the Gangas or Priests of Congo, is one whose official title is Mutuin, and who calls himself King of the Water, for by water alone he professes to heal all diseases. At certain times all who need his aid are assembled on the banks of a river. He throws an empty vessel in, repeats some mysterious words, then takes it out full and distributes the water as an universal medicine.

The Herring has been called the King of Fish, because of its excellence, the Herring, as all Dutchmen know, and as all other men ought to know, exceeding every other fish in goodness. Therefore it may have been that the first dish which used to be brought to table in this country on Easter Day, was a Red Herring on horseback, set in a corn sallad.

Others have called the Whale, King of Fish. But Abraham Rees, D.D. and F.R.S. of Cyclopedian celebrity, assures us that the whale notwithstanding its piscine appearance, and its residence in the waters, has no claim to a place among fishes. Uncle Toby would have whistled Lillabullero at being told that the Whale was not a fish. The said Abraham Rees, however, of the double Dees, who is, as the advertisement on the cover of his own Cyclopedia, informs us, “of acknowledged learning and industry, and of unquestionable experience in this (the Cyclopedian) department of literary labour,” candidly admits that the Ancients may surely be excused for thinking Whales were fish. But how can Abraham Rees be excused for denying the Whale's claim to a place among the inhabitants of the Great Deep,—which was appointed for him at the Creation.

But the Great Fish who is undoubtedly the King of Fish, and of all creatures that exist in the sea, Whales, Mermen-and-Maids included, is the fish Arez, which Ormuzd created, and placed in the water that surrounds Hom, the King of Trees, to protect that sacred arboreal Majesty against the Great Toad sent there by Ahriman to destroy it.

It is related in the same archives of cosmogony that the King of the Goats is a White Goat, who carries his head in a melancholy and cogitabund position, regarding the ground,—weighed down perhaps by the cares of royalty; that the King of the Sheep has his left ear white,—from whence it may appear that the Royal Mutton is a black sheep, which the Royal Ram of the Fairy Tales is not: that the King of the Camels has two white ears: and that the King of the Bulls is neither Apis, nor John Bull, but a Black Bull with yellow ears. According to the same archives, a White Horse with yellow ears and full eyes is King of the Horses;—doubtless the Mythological Horse King would acknowledge Nobs for his Vicegerent. The Ass King is also white: his Asinine Majesty has no Vicegerent. The number of competitors being so great that he has appointed a regency.

The King of Dogs is yellow. The King of Hares red.

There are Kings among the Otters in the Highland waters, and also among their relations the Sea Otters. The royal Otter is larger than his subjects, and has a white spot upon the breast. He shuns observation, which it is sometimes provident for Kings to do, especially under such circumstances as his, for his skin is in great request, among soldiers and sailors; it is supposed to ensure victory, to secure the wearer from being wounded, to be a prophylactic in times of contagious sickness, and a preservative in shipwreck. But it is not easy to find an Otter King, and when found there is danger in the act of regicide, for he bears a charmed life. The moment in which he is killed proves fatal to some other creature, either man or beast, whose mortal existence is mysteriously linked with his. The nature of the Otter monarchy has not been described, it is evident, however, that his ministers have no loaves to dispose of,—but then they have plenty of fishes.

The Ant, who, when Solomon entered the Valley of Ants with his armies of Genii and men and birds, spoke to the nation of Ants, saying, O Ants, enter ye not your habitations, lest Solomon and his host tread you under foot, and perceive it not,—that wise pismire is said by certain commentators upon the Koran to have been the Queen of the Ants.

Men have held the Eagle to be the King of Birds; but notwithstanding the authority of Horace, the Gods know otherwise, for they appointed the Tchamrosch to that dignity, at the beginning. Some writers indeed would have the Eagle to be Queen, upon the extraordinary ground that all Eagles are hens; though in what manner the species is perpetuated these persons have not attempted to shew.

The Carrion Crows of Guiana have their King, who is a White Crow(rara avis in terris)and has wings tipt with black. When a flight of these birds arrive at the prey which they have scented from afar, however ravenous they may be, they keep at a respectful distance from the banquet, till his Carrion Majesty has satisfied himself. But there is another Bird, in South America, whom all the Birds of prey of every species acknowledge for their natural sovereign, and carry food to him in his nest, as their tribute.

The King of the Elks is so huge an elk that other elks look like pismires beside him. His legs are so long, and his strength withal such, that when the snow lies eight feet deep it does not in the least impede his pace. He has an arm growing out of his shoulder, and a large suite who attend upon him wherever he goes, and render him all the service he requires.

I have never heard anything concerning the King of the Crickets except in a rodomontade of Matthew Merrygreeks, who, said Ralph Roister Doister,

bet him on Christmas dayThat he crept in a hole, and had not a word to say.

Among the many images of Baal, one was the form or representation of a Fly, and hence, says Master Perkins, he is called Baalzebub the Lord of Flies, because he was thought to be the chiefest Fly in the world. That is he was held to be the King of the Flies. I wish the King of the Spiders would catch him.

The King of the Peacocks may be read of in the Fairy Tales. The Japanese name for a crane is Tsuri and the common people in that country always give that bird the same title which is given to their first secular Emperor, Tsiri-sama—my great Lord Crane.

The Basilisk, or crowned Cockatrice, who is the chick of a Cock's egg, is accounted the King of Serpents. And as it has been said that there is no Cock Eagle, so upon more probable cause it is affirmed that there is no female Basilisk, that is no Henatrice, the Cock laying only male eggs. But the most venomous of this kind is only an earthly and mortal vicegerent, for the true King of Serpents is named Sanc-ha-naga, and formerly held his court in Chacragiri, a mountain in the remote parts of the East, where he and his serpentine subjects were oppressed by the Rational Eagle Garuda. In the spirit of an imperial Eagle, Garuda required from them a serpent every day for his dinner, which was regarded by the serpents as a most unpleasant tribute, especially by such as were full grown and in good condition; for the Rational Eagle being large and strong enough to carry Vishnu on his back, expected always a good substantial snake sufficient for a meal. Sanc-ha-naga, like a Patriot King endeavoured to deliver his liege subjects from this consuming tyranny; the attempt drew upon him the wrath of Garuda, which would soon have been followed by his vengeance, and the King of Serpents must have been devoured himself, if he and all the snakes had not retired, as fast as they could wriggle to Sanc-ha-vana, in Sanc-ha-dwip, which is between Cali and the Sea; there they found an asylum near the palace of Carticeya, son of the mountain goddess Parvats, and Commander of the Celestial Armies. Carticeya is more powerful than Garuda, and therefore the divine Eagle is too rational to invade them while they are under his protection. It would have been more fortunate for the world if the King of Serpents had not found any one to protect him; for whatever his merits may be towards his subjects, he is a most pestilent Potentate, the breath of his nostrils is a fiery wind which destroys and consumes all creatures and all herbs within an hundredyojanasof his abode, and which in fact is the Simoom, so fatal to those who travel in the deserts. The sage Agastya for a time put a stop to this evil, for he, by the virtue of his self-inflection, obtained such power, that he caught Sanc-ha-naga, and carried him about in an earthen vessel. That vessel however must have been broken in some unhappy hour, for the fiery and poisonous wind is now as frequent as ever in the deserts.

The Hindoos say that whoever performs yearly and daily rites in honour of the King of the Serpents, will acquire immense riches.ThisKing of the Serpents, I say, to wit Sanc'-ha-naga,—(or Sanc' ha-mucha, as he is also called from the shape of his mouth resembling that of a shell)—because there is another King of the Serpents, Karkotaka by name, whom the sage Narada for deceiving him, punished once by casting him into a great fire, and confining him there by a curse till he was delivered in the manner which the reader may find related in the 14th book of Nela and Damarante, as translated by Mr. Milman from the Sanscrit.

The Locusts according to Agur in the Book of Proverbs have no King, although they go forth all of them by bands. Perhaps their form of government has changed, for the Moors of Morocco inform us that they have a sovereign, who leads forth their innumerable armies; and as his nation belongs to the Mahometan world, his title is Sultan Jereed.

The Rose is the Queen of the Garden

plebei cedite flores;Hortorum regina suos ostendit honores.1

1RAPIN.

Bampfield Moore Carew was King of the Beggars; and James Bosvill, was King of the Gypsies. He lies buried in Rossington Churchyard, near Doncaster, and for many years the gypsies from the south visited his grave annually, and among other rites poured a flagon of ale upon it.

There was a personage at Oxford who bore in that University the distinguished title of Rex Rafforum. After taking his degree he exchanged it for that of the Reverend.

TheScurræ,—(we have no word in our language which designates men who profess and delight in indulging an ill-mannered and worse-minded buffoonery,)—theScurræalso have their King. He bears a Baron's coronet.

The throne of the Dandies has been vacant since the resignation of the personage dignified and distinguished by the title of Beau Brummel.

By an advertisement in the Times of Friday, June 18, 1830, I learn that the beautiful and stupendous Bradwell Ox, is at present the “truly wonderful King of the Pastures,” the said King Ox measuring fourteen feet in girth, and sixteen feet in length, being eighteen hands high, and five years and a half old, and weighing four thousand five hundred pounds, or more than five hundred and sixty stone, which is nearly double the size of large oxen in general.

Under the Twelve Cæsars, (and probably it might deserve the title long after them,) the Via Appia was called the Queen of Roads. That from Hyde Park Corner isRegina viarumin the 19th century.

Easter Sunday has been called the King of Days, though Christmas Day might dispute the sovereignty, being in Greek the Queen day of the Kalendar.Ἡ βασιλίσσα ἡμέραJustin Martyr calls it.

Who is King of the Booksellers? There is no King among them at this time, but there is a Directory of five Members, Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown and Green in the East; the Emperor Murraylemagne, whom Byron used to call the Grand Murray, reigned alone in the West, till Henry Colburn divided his empire, and supported the station which he had assumed by an army of trumpeters which he keeps in constant pay.

If the Books had a King that monarchy must needs be an elective one, and the reader of these volumes knows where the election would fall. But literature being a Republic, this cannot be the King of Books. Suffice it that it is a BOOK FOR AKING, or, for our SOVEREIGNLADY THEQUEEN.

MEASURE FOR MEASURE.

Le Plebe è bestiaDi cento teste, e non rinchiude in loroPur oncia di saper.CHIABRERA.

The Public, will, I very well know, make free with memore suo, as it thinks it has a right to do with any one who comes before it with anything designed for its service, whether it be for its amusement, its use, or its instruction. Now my Public, I willmore meomake free with you—that we may be so far upon equal terms.

οὐδὲν δεῖ παραμπέχειν λόγους.1

You have seldom or never had the truth spoken to you when you have been directly addressed. You have been called the enlightened Public, the generous Public, the judicious Public, the liberal Public, the discerning Public, and so forth. Nay your bare titleTHEPUBLIC, oftentimes stands alonepar excellencein its plain majesty like that of the king, as if needing no affix to denote its inherent and pre-eminent importance. But I will speak truth to you my Public.

Be not deceived! I have no bended knees,No supple tongue, no speeches steep'd in oil,No candied flattery, nor honied words!2

1EURIPIDES.

2RANDOLPH'SARISTIPPUS.

I must speak the truth to you my Public,

Sincera verità non vuol tacersi.3

Where your enlightenedness (if there be such a word) consists and your generosity, and your judgement, and your liberality, and your discernment, and your majesty to boot,—to express myself as Whitfield or Rowland Hill would have done in such a case (for they knew the force of language)—I must say, it would puzzle the Devil to tell.Il faut librement avec verité francher ce mot, sans en estre repris; ou si l'on est, c'est très-mal à propos.4

3CHIABRERA.

4BRANTOME.

I will tell you what you are; you are a great, ugly, many headed beast, with a great many ears which are long, hairy, ticklish, moveable, erect and never at rest.

Look at your picture in Southey's Hexameters,—that poem in which his laureated Doctorship writes verses by the yard instead of the foot,—he describes you as “many headed and monstrous,”

with numberless faces,Numberless bestial ears, erect to all rumours, and restless,And with numberless mouths which are fill'd with lies as with arrows.

Look at that Picture my Public!—It is very like you!

For individual readers I profess just as much respect as they individually deserve. There are a few persons in every generation for whose approbation,—rather let it be said for whose gratitude and love,—it is worth while “to live laborious days,” and for these readers of this generation and the generations that are to follow,—for these

Such as will join their profit with their pleasure,And come to feed their understanding parts;—For these I'll prodigally spend myself,And speak away my spirit into air;For these I'll melt my brain into invention,Coin new conceits, and hang my richest wordsAs polished jewels in their bounteous ears.5

5BENJONSON.

Such readers, they who to their learning add knowledge, and to their knowledge wisdom and to their wisdom benevolence, will say to me

ὦ καλὰ λέγων, πολὺ δ᾽ ἄμεινον᾽ ἔτι τῶν λόγωνἐργασάμεν᾽, εἴθ᾽ ἐπέλ—θοις ἅπαντά μοι σαφῶς·ὡς ἐγώ μοι δοκῶκἂν μακρὰν ὁδὸν διελθεῖν ὥς᾽ ἀκοῦσαι.πρὸς τάδ᾽ ὦ βέλτιστε θαῤῥήσας λέγ᾽, ὡς ἃ—παντες ἡδόμεσθά σοι.6

But such readers are very few. Walter Landor said that if ten such persons should approve his writings, he would call for a division and count a majority. To please them is to obtain an earnest of enduring fame; for which, if it be worth any thing, no price can be too great. But for the aggregate any thing is good enough. Yes my Public, Mr. Hume's arithmetic and Mr. Brougham's logic, Lord Castlereagh's syntax, Mr. Irving's religion and Mr. Carlisle's irreligion, the politics of the Edinburgh Review and the criticism of the Quarterly, Thames water, Brewer's beer, Spanish loans, old jokes, new constitutions, Irish eloquence, Scotch metaphysics, Tom and Jerry, Zimmerman on Solitude, Chancery Equity and Old Bailey Law, Parliamentary wit, the patriotism of a Whig Borough-monger, and the consistency of a British cabinet;Et s'il y a encore quelque chose à dire, je le tiens pour dit;—

6ARISTOPHANES.

Yes my Public,

Nor would I you should look for other looks,Gesture, or compliment from me.7

7BENJONSON.

Minus dico quam vellem, et verba omninò frigidiora hæc quam ut satis exprimant quod concipio:8these and any thing worse than these,—if worse than what is worst can be imagined, will do for you. If there be any thing in infinite possibility more worthless than these, more floccical-naucical, nihilish-pilish, assisal-teruncial, more good for nothing than good for nothingness itself, it is good enough for you.

8PICUSMIRANDULA.

VARIETY OF STILES.

Qualis vir, talis oratio.ERASMIADAGIA.

Authors are often classed, like painters, according to the school, in which they have been trained, or to which they have attached themselves. But it is not so easy to ascertain this in literature as it is in painting; and if some of the critics who have thus endeavoured to class them, were sent to school themselves and there whipt into a little more learning, so many silly classifications of this kind would not mislead those readers who suppose in the simplicity of their own good faith, that no man presumes to write upon a subject which he does not understand.

Stiles may with more accuracy be classed, and for this purpose metals might be used in literature as they are in heraldry. We might speak of the golden stile, the silver, the iron, the leaden, the pinchbeck and the bronze.

Others there are which cannot be brought under any of these appellations. There is the Cyclopean stile, of which Johnson is the great example; the sparkling, or micacious, possessed by Hazlitt, and much affected in Reviews and Magazines; the oleaginous, in which Mr. Charles Butler bears the palm, or more appropriately the olive branch: the fulminating—which is Walter Landor's, whose conversation has been compared to thunder and lightning; the impenetrable—which is sometimes used by Mr. Coleridge; and the Jeremy-Benthamite, which cannot with propriety be distinguished by any other name than one derived from its unparellelled and unparallellable author.

Ex stilo,says Erasmus,perpendimus ingenium cujusque, omnemque mentis habitum ex ipsâ dictionis ratione conjectamus. Est enim tumidi, stilus turgidus; abjecti, humilis, exanguis; asperi, scaber; amarulenti, tristis ac maledicus; deliciis affluentis, picturatus ac dissolutus; Breviter, omne vitæ simulacrum, omnis animi vis, in oratione perinde ut in speculo repræsentatur, ac vel intima pectoris, arcanis quibusdam vestigiis, deprehenduntur.

There is the lean stile, of which Nathaniel Lardner, and William Coxe may be held up as examples; and there is the larded one, exemplified in Bishop Andrews, and in Burton, the Anatomist of Melancholy; Jeremy Taylor's is both a flowery and a fruitful stile: Harvey the Meditationist's a weedy one. There are the hard and dry; the weak and watery; the manly and the womanly; the juvenile and the anile; the round and the pointed; the flashy and the fiery; the lucid and the opaque; the luminous and the tenebrous; the continuous and the disjointed. The washy and the slap-dash are both much in vogue, especially in magazines and reviews; so are the barbed and the venomed. The High-Slang stile is exhibited in the Court Journal and in Mr. Colburn's novels; the Low Slang in Tom and Jerry, Bell's Life in London, and most Magazines, those especially which are of most pretensions.

The flatulent stile, the feverish, the aguish, and the atrabilious are all as common as the diseases of body from which they take their name, and of mind in which they originate; and not less common than either is the dyspeptic stile, proceeding from a weakness in the digestive faculty.

Learned, or if not learned, Dear Reader, I had much to say of stile, but the under written passage from that beautiful book, Xenophon's Memorabilia Socratis, has induced me, as the Latins say,stilum vertere, and to erase a paragraph written with ink in which the gall predominated.

Ἐγὼ δ᾽ οὖν καὶ αὐτὸς, ὦ Αντιφῶν, ὥσπερ ἄλλός τις ἢ ἵππῳ ἀγαθῷ ἢ κυνὶ ἢ ὂρνιθι ἥδεται, οὕτω καὶ ἒτι μᾶλλον ἥδομαι τοῖς φίλοις ἀγαθοῖς· καὶ, ἐάν τι σχῶ ἀγαθὸν διδάσκω, καὶ ἄλλοις σύνιστημι, παρ᾽ ὧν ἂν ἡγῶμαι ὠφελήσεσθαί τι αὐτοὺς εἰς ἀρετήν᾽ καὶ, τοὺς θησαυροὺς τῶν πάλι σοφῶν ἀνδρῶν, οὕς ἐκεῖνοι κατέλιπον ἐν βιβλίοις γράφεντες, ἀνελίττων κοινῆ σὺν τοῖς φίλοις διέρχομαι· καὶ ἄν τι ὁρῶμεν ἀγαθὸν, ἐκλεγόμεθα, καὶ μέγα νομίζομεν κέρδος, ἐὰν ἀλλήλοις ὠφέλιμοι γιγνώμεθα.

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